This book is the first extensive survey of early Chinese photographers in any language. It is profusely illustrated with more than 400 photographs, many of which are published here for the first time, including a fine selection of Foochow landscapes from the studios of Lai Fong, China’s leading photographer during this period, and Tung Hing.
Please click here to download a combined index of the entire History of Photography in China series.
Early chapters introduce the historical
milieu from which the earliest Chinese photographers emerged and
illuminate the beginnings of photography in China and contemporary
Chinese reactions to its introduction. Early Chinese commercial
photography – both portrait and landscape – are also discussed with
reference to similar genres in a more international context. Individual
chapters are devoted to Chinese photographers in Peking, Hong Kong,
Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Amoy, Hankow, Tientsin and other ports, Macau
and Formosa. These are followed by a series of appendices: writings on
photography in China by John Thomson and Isaac Taylor Headland and an
invaluable guide to the identification of photographs from the Afong
Studio. It concludes with an extensive bibliography, general and
regional chronologies, and a biographical index. Combining existing
knowledge of the subject with a mass of new research material, this
major work also introduces and identifies the work of a number of
previously forgotten or overlooked Chinese masters. It includes the work
of: Chow Kwa (Su Sanxin), Hing Qua John & Co., Jiu San & E
Fong, Kai Sack, Kung Tai, Lai Chong, Lai Fong, Liang Shitai (See Tay),
Luo Yuanyou, Man Foc, Pow Kee, Pun Lun, Sang Cheong, Tung Hing, Wo
Cheong, Ye Chung and many others.
This book completes a
three-volume series on the photographic history of China until the late
19th century and will prompt a re-evaluation and heightened appreciation
of these early Chinese photographers.
ISBN: 978-0-9563012-4-6
Published by Bernard Quaritch Ltd., London, May 2013